Feedback for January 2003

I was
confronted by a Creationist who maintained there was not
enough time fort a DNA molecule to evolve and he estimated
the earth to be about 10 million years old. What can I say
to him?

Response

From:

John Wilkins

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Response:

"Read
something"?

Feedback Letter

From:

Darksyd1011

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Comment:

Ladies and
Gentlemen:

Those of us from the MSN Evolution Vs Creationism wish
to thank you for your hard work and excellent articles on
the issue of Evolution and Creationism over the past year.
For your entertainment pleasure, we present to you the 10
worst Creationist arguments/statements that we witnessed
being used in our chat room for 2002. In general objections
to evolution in our Chat Room were the same endlessly
recycled nonsense you have to endure at TalkOrigins. Just a
Theory, The Bible says so, No new info, Second Law of
Thermo, No transitionals/Missing Links, Moondust, Hoaxes
and misidentified fossils, ..etc However we occasionally
get stuff that is so off the wall it cannot be easily
categorized. These ten are some of the funnier examples of
those statements.

Top Ten Worst Creationist Args

# 10 CrzyboutGod: I feel sorry for you. You're all
blinded by the TRUTH!

# 9 Trumpet57: If Noah didn't cause the seashells to be
mountins then how do u think the fishes got up there by
walking on the fins or flying or what? And I'm not ignorent
I just want to show if you can't answer.

Under the "oops" category # 8 Livng4him21: If people
evolved from monkeys why are there still people?

Under "OMG The Irony" Top Ten Worst Creationist Args # 7
Bleeding_Robot: You're the one who is doing the assuming
here. It says in the bible that God made Adam fully formed
and the stars the same way. So the light was already on the
way to Earth. Anything else is pure guesswork on your
part.

# 6 ashydad: How can you call evolution a science? I'm
looking at a dictionary right now and there is no mention
of evolution under science.

# 5 and the winner of the Utter Lack of Logic Award!
Guest_byadamsite: You just said theories can never be
proven. Since creation is the only theory that has been
proven creation wins again!

Top Ten Worst Creationist Arguments of All Time # 4
InoUrButWhtAmI: Science shows God even holds the atoms
together though some of the partcicles have been positive
charges and would push on each other. So making the Earth
would be a lot easier for him than you think.

# 3 Ko_Uraki : tell me how nothing came from
nothing!?!

Top Ten Worst Creationists Arguments of All Time Arg
Runner-up!! (Remember that if our winner is for any reason
unable to fill their obligations as the poster person for
Creationist Idiocy this runner-up will step in) new558 :
The whole world uses the seven day week as was predicted by
the bible!

And the #1 Worst Creationists Argument of 2002 is....
sweetheart5666 : if evolution is true, then how come horses
exist?

(Editor's note: Despite sustained and repeated requests
for clarity-between bouts of hysterical laughter-The Hosts
and Members of EvC were unable to find out what Sweet meant
by this question)

~Darksyd~

Responses

From:

John Wilkins

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Response:

Thanks for
this concise summary of the majority of our monthly
feedbacks for the past five years or so...

From:

PZ Myers

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Response:

Umm,
John...if this were a concise summary of the feedback it
would have to also include "the world is not flat!"

Feedback Letter

From:

Victor Mark

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Comment:

I came
across reference to this site from a letter in the Fargo
(ND) Forum this month. I have only looked at a little of
it, but I find this an amazing resource: thorough,
up-to-date, well organized, thoughtful, and navigable. I
highly commend this site as an introduction into
controversies concerning mechanisms of evolution.

Feedback Letter

From:

Michael W. Clark

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Comment:

You have
discounted the accumulation of space dust as insignificant
(Morris) when it is very significant. Let me explain. The
Earth and the Moon orbit about one another in a dynamic
equalibrium in which the dominate pair of forces is: the
Gravitational Potential Energy of the Earth is equal in
magnitude to the Kinetic Energy of the Moon. This dominate
pair of forces is based on the Mass of both planets, the
Universal gravitational constant, and the radius between
the planets. If there is no change in this relationship,
then the long term distance between both planets will not
change. This however is not the case. The moon is moving
away from the Earth at between 3.8 cm and 5 cm per year.
This is a change of approximately one part in 12 billion in
the radius annually. That means that either the Universal
gravitational constant is decreasing, or the combined mass
of the planet pair is gaining mass at one part in 12
billion per year. I favor the latter, though the former has
its advocates. The Earth has the bigger mass at 597 x 10^22
kg versus the Moon at 7.35 x 10^22 kg. Dividing 6.04 x
10^24 kg by 12 Billion gives an annual increase in mass of
5 x 10^14 kg. This really is not much if spread over the
surface of both planets, only about one kg per square meter
per year (Earth). About the thickness of three sheets of
paper (0.4 mm thick). The reason it is not noticable is
that it rains and is washed down into the ocean basins
where it collects year after year. The next time it snows
on your cars windshield, let it sit there and melt
undisturbed. The dusty layer left behind is just space
dust, maybe 5% or less of what we get annually.

Let the dust of life collect and there will be a
continual new array of nitches created for life to evolve
into.

I will drop one more hint. At the peak size of the
dinosaurs the rate of accumulation had climbed to 6 x 10^15
kg per year. This was about 4.8 mm per year. This is about
12 times the current rate of accumulation now.

The slow rate now would construct the Earth in 12
billion years which is too slow. The fast rate would
construct the Earth in one billion years which is too fast.
The average lies somewhere in between. (4.55 Billion
Years). Do the math and figure out how fast the Earth
really grows, it will astonish you.

Responses

From:

Wesley R. Elsberry

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Response:

Once upon a time, Lord Kelvin produced an elegant
analysis of heat transfer of the earth in order to estimate
its age. He bracketed the earth's age as somewhere between
20 and 100 million years, IIRC. These figures were used to
argue against the idea of common descent, since it severely
restricted the available time for evolution to occur.
However, Lord Kelvin did not include the effects of
radioactivity as a heat source in his analysis. (That's not
his fault, since radioactivity hadn't been discovered yet.)
Because of this, his conclusions were way off the mark.

The reader's analysis similarly fails to incorporate a
key concept. In this case, that concept is tidal
forces. Tides contribute to an increasing distance
between the earth and the moon, which contradicts the
premise upon which the reader builds his argument. An
interesting exposition can be seen in this essay.

Wesley

From:

Tim Thompson

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“The
point is that in a non-isolated [open] system there exists
a possibility for formation of ordered, low-entropy
structures at sufficiently low temperatures. This ordering
principle is responsible for the appearance of ordered
structures such as crystals as well as for the phenomena of
phase transitions. Unfortunately this principle cannot
explain the formation of biological structures.” [I.
Prigogine, G. Nicolis and A. Babloyants, Physics Today
25(11):23 (1972)]

Response

From:

Chris Ho-Stuart

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Response:

The
implication of the quote intended by creationists is that
Prigogine et al are showing an inconsistency between
thermodynamics and the natural formation of biological
systems.

The truth is exactly the reverse: far from proposing
thermodynamics as a problem for the origins of life, the
quoted paper is proposing that thermodynamics and the
second law is a major contributing factor to the
spontaneous formation of complex structures in prebiotic
evolution.

It is good practice to identify secondary sources used
to obtain such quotes; and to check the quote personally.
This may help avoid perpetuating a deceit.

Ilya Prigogine won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1977
for his work in thermodynamics, which was about how
dissipative systems form in open systems far from
equilibrium. Biological systems are an example.

Most of the article from which you are quoting is
on-line; to read it,
click on this link. I will give some extracts and
discussion here; for more detail please go to the original
article.

The article begins with a one sentence summary, as
follows:

The functional order maintained within living systems
seems to defy the Second Law; nonequilibrium thermodynamics
describes how such systems come to terms with entropy.

That is, the article explains how the functional order
of biological systems is consistent with the second
law.

The article begins by showing a simple case for open
systems close to equilibrium in which there is the
possibility of the spontaneous formation of low entropy
sub-systems. The quote you give appears here, to state that
this particular principle does not work for biological
systems.

Some more context to your quote:

Unfortunately this principle cannot explain the
formation of biological structures. The probability that at
ordinary temperatures a macroscopic number of molecules is
assembled to give rise to the highly ordered structures and
to the coordinated functions characterizing living
organisms is vanishingly small. The idea of spontaneous
genesis of life in its present form is therefore highly
improbable, even on the scale of the billions of years
during which prebiotic evolution occurred.

The conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is that
the apparent contradiction between biological order and the
laws of physics--in particular the second law of
thermodynamics--cannot be resolved as long as we try to
understand living systems by the methods of the familiar
equilibrium statistical mechanics and equally familar
thermodynamics.

That is, equilibrium thermodynamics is not what is
required. Prigogine developed a theory of
non-equilibrium thermodynamics which applies to
systems far from equilibrium. There is no violation of the
second law required; just the problem of applying
thermodynamics to new kinds of systems. The next paragraph
in the article considers the order apparent in biological
systems a bit further, and concludes with this
sentence:

One of our main points here shall be that an increase in
dissipation is possible for nonlinear systems driven far
from equilibrium. Such systems may be subject to a
succession of unstable transitions that lead to spatial
order and to increasing entropy production.

The next section addresses Nonequilibrium open
systems, and then the section after directly addresses
evolution.

What is the thermodynamic meaning of prebiological
evolution? Darwin's principle of "survival of the fittest"
through natural selection can only apply once pre
biological evolution has led to the formation of some
primitive living beings. A new evolutionary principle,
proposed recently by Manfred Eigen, would replace Darwin's
idea in the context of prebiotic evolution. It amounts to
optimizing a quantity measuring the faithfulness, or
quality, of the macromolecules in reproducing themselves
via template action. We here propose an alternative
description of prebiological evolution. The main idea is
the possibility that a prebiological system may evolve
through a whole succession of transitions leading to a
hierarchy of more and more complex and organized states.
Such transitions can only arise in nonlinear systems that
are maintained far from equilibrium; that is, beyond a
certain critical threshold the steady-state regime becomes
unstable and the system evolves to a new configuration. As
a result, if the system is to be able to evolve through
successive instabilities, a mechanism must be developed
whereby each new transition favors further evolution by
increasing the nonlinearity and the distance from
equilibrium. One obvious mechanism is that each transition
enables the system to increase the entropy production.

For a very brief and non-technical statement of what
Prigogine is proposing....

The second law is, roughly, that entropy increases in
all processes, or that heat will flow from hot things to
cold things. Roughly speaking, entropy measures the extent
to which energy is dissipated in a system. Open
systems in a state of great energy flux (like the Earth)
will tend to remain far from equilibrium. More importantly,
Prigogine shows that in these conditions, ordered
structures tend to form which facilitate the net
dissipation of energy. Such systems help to drive the
universe as a whole to states of increasing entropy, while
being maintained in ordered state themselves. The paper
goes on to give examples.

Far from proposing thermodynamics as a problem for the
origins of life, this paper is proposing that
thermodynamics and the second law is a major contributing
factor to the spontaneous formation of complex dissipative
structures in prebiotic evolution.

The American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) is a
fellowship of men and women in science and disciplines that
relate to science who share a common fidelity to the Word
of God and a commitment to integrity in the practice of
science.

[Professor Prigogine has kindly reviewed
this feedback at my request, and concurs with my conclusion
that the quoted paper is proposing that thermodynamics and
the second law as a contributing factor, not a problem. Any
errors or defects this response, however, remain my
own.]

Feedback Letter

From:

Angela

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Comment:

I just
wanted to say that to many people get caught up in issues
such as why a global flood wouldn't be possible. If you
really believe in something, how it happend shouldn't
matter. Look further at the truth, and the truth is that
Jesus was born, lived and then died for our sins. Stop
getting caught up in the little things, we as humans will
never know completely "how" everything happend, just know
that it did, and when you meet the maker you can ask Him,
just how He did it!!!

Response

From:

Mark Isaak

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Response:

The
attitudes you are suggesting are called gullibility and
ignorance. Many of us believe that they are not
virtues.

Feedback Letter

Comment:

If evolution
is a fact, why has it stopped? why is it not occuring
today?

Response

From:

Chris Ho-Stuart

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Response:

It is
occuring today, and is being directly observed and
measured.

One of the most famous and thorough examples of direct
observation of evolution over an extended period of time is
the work of the Grants in observing finches on the
Galapagos islands continuously for more than thirty years.
A very readable and gripping account of this work is
available in

The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our
Time
by Jonathan Weiner (Knopf, 1994), (paperback reprint by
Vintage books, 1995)

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Comment:

Hey you, you
suck, After I read your comments I told one of my
colleagues that it should hurt to be really stupid. He
laughed so hard that he broke his chair. Later when I had
my college writing class read your comments they all
laughed so hard and I could not regain control. The main
problems with your writing is that you complain about
inaccuracies in publications when you don't go to work and
obtain accurate information. I enjoyed reading your the
"information" on your site. I would appreciate it if you
would send me any further publications, as they are
humorous to read. In the future please leave defense of
science to professionals, if you were actually
serious.

Response

From:

Wesley R. Elsberry

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Response:

If one is going to play the arrogance card, it is best
to check one's grammar before posting.

Wesley

Feedback Letter

From:

Scott Johnston

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Comment:

I found this
site after there was a slight debate at work earlier today.
Apparently, one of my co-workers had been spouting that
there is a vaste amount of evidence to prove that the Earth
is not nearly as old as scientists say it is. He had been
talking about this yesterday, and the people I were working
with today were talking about it.

Anyway, being a strong science buff, and evolutionist, I
inquired about what exactly his "evidence" was, and they
told me about the "shrinking sun" and "the receding moon" .
I just laughed, and explained to them how things really
were (and I was glad to see that you have my exact
arguments on this site.)

Actually, I came away from the conversation more
confused than anything else- most of what the creationists
spout doesn't even make any sense-- so I just had to check
the internet to see if these "arguments" were actually real
things people actually believe.

Feedback Letter

From:

Andrew French

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Comment:

Hi there
again. Just a quick observation: the link to "The
Ten-Percent Myth by Benjamin Radford" from the Nov '00
feedback is broken; I was wondering if you guys had another
one, or if you could comment briefly on the myth. I'm
curious because I had not heard that the supposition was a
myth.

Response

From:

Chris Ho-Stuart

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Response:

You are
asking about the myth that we only use ten percent of our
brains.

There is another excellent article online at Science
Master, on the brain in general, by Kenneth A. Wesson.
Part five of the article address the myth. Note that
the brain is used for a lot more than just "thinking".

This story is of considerable relevance to evolution,
since there is a considerable evolutionary cost to having a
large brain. If we did not make full use of it, this would
be a real problem for evolution.

As an aside, it is true that many people do not use
their thinking hardware to optimal effect. This is not
about how much of the brain you use, but how well you use
what you have. This also, is perhaps of some relevance to
the creationism evolution debate. :-)

Feedback Letter

From:

Brian Gortner

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Comment:

I just want
to say THANK YOU for having such an awesome website.It is
incredibly informing and refreshing to read. THANK YOU
again! Brian Gortner

Feedback Letter

Comment:

Just a
couple quick questions for ya:

1) Who is responsible for posting the feedback? Is there
a certain deadline that it has to be up, or is it just
thrown up "when it's done?"

2) Someone responded once that individual organisms do
not evolve, that entire populations evolve. Another person
responded to a different question by saying that evolution
often happens because of a "glitch" in the copy of a DNA
(implied: in a single organism). Can you
elaborate/differentiate?

3) I have heard about a self-awareness experiment where
chimpanzees were shown a mirror and had a red dot painted
on their fur... the idea being that if they looked for it
on their own body, they would qualify as being aware of
their own existence. If they are aware of their own
existence, does this imply that they have a soul?

4) Is it possible to be equally bipedal and quadrepedal?
Which organisms, if any, exhibit this feature?

5) Are "Scientific American" and "Discover" magazines
held in high regard by the scientific community or are they
considered water-down pop science soundbite peddlers?

Thank you for your time.

Response

From:

John Wilkins

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1. When it's
done. The administrator sends out a request to finish up
sometimes.

2. All mutations occur in individuals at first.
Evolution occurs as these mutations (now called "alleles"
because they are alternative genes in the population, from
the Greek prefix "allo-" meaning "other") spread through
the population, changing the frequencies of these different
genes.

3. For what value or meaning of "soul"? If by "soul" you
mean they are self-aware, surely; but if by "soul" you mean
"created personal essence", then consult your local
theologian of choice.

4. All bipedal organisms bar one have tails that balance
them; many of them can move around quadrupedally, but not
well. [The exception is, of course, humans.] Some
quadrupedal organisms can stand on their hind legs (e.g.,
dogs, cats, sloths). Generally, though if an individual has
adapted as it grows to being one, it does the other very
poorly.

5. Now you ask for a personal opinion. Here's mine.
Scientific American is generally very good - it has
articles written by specialists in the fields.
Discover is popscience, and should be taken as such.
Sometimes it will be good, and at other times, not so good.
I prefer to read the "discussion" articles in the actual
science journals - Science and Nature are
both excellent if you can get access, and they explain
things for the non-specialist but in a non-patronizing
manner.

Feedback Letter

From:

Stuart Marks. Art Student, Chicago Art Inst.

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Comment:

After
reading all the links to Mr. Hovind’s information as
you requested, it is obvious that you and your friends are
certainly opportunists who used an open invitation from Mr.
Hovind to engineer the existence of your sites. He
repeatedly queried your board for the subject matter, while
you quibbled about the rules of argument. If the empirical
evidence exists, just tell us. I don’t have $250,000
to award you. But I’d just like to see you answer Mr.
Hovind’s offer. Your handling of his offer seems
nothing more than skirting the main issue; show me the
evidence. Forget the money and the offer. Show me the
evidence. The point is, in case you missed it, that
evolution is being taught as a fact, shrowded here and
there by a few occasions that elude to it being a theory.
And also, it seems that regular rules of science
don’t apply to the study of evolution. And, why is it
that the published answers to Mr. Hovind’s questions
contain so many “We don’t know”s? If this
thing called evolution is important enough to teach to our
children, to the exclusion of other religions, why not
teach the empirical data along with it?

Response

From:

Ed Brayton

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Response:

This is a
very strange feedback letter. First, you say that we are
"opportunists who used an open invitation from Mr. Hovind
to engineer the existence of our sites". This is
particularly odd in light of the fact that in this huge
archive of information, much less than 1% of it deals with
Hovind at all. The existence of the Talk.Origins Archive
has nothing whatsoever to do with Hovind, and it existed
long before anything in it addressed Hovind at all. So,
strike one.

Next, you say that Hovind "repeatedly queried" us "for
the subject matter". I have no idea what that means. To my
knowledge, Kent Hovind has never queried the archive at all
for any reason, though some of us have individually have
had quite a bit of contact with him. Strike two.

Finally, you think we should take him up on his offer.
We get at least one letter every month suggesting that we
take up his challenge. But as I have pointed out
repeatedly, Hovind's challenge cannot possibly be met - not
by evolution, but by ANY factual claim. I have offered Mr.
Hovind one million dollars time and time again to prove any
empirical claim with the same criteria that he sets up for
his challenge. He has not responded. Why? Because he knows,
as I do, that he has rigged the challenge so that it is
impossible to win. I'll go through the reasons why his
challenge is a fraud one more time:

1. His definition of "evolution" is ridiculously broad.
Evolution is the theory that all modern plants and animals
are derived from a common ancestor through descent with
modification. That's all it is. Yet Hovind has wrapped up
virtually all of cosmology into evolution as well. His
complaint is with atheism, not with evolution as properly
defined.

2. Not satisfied merely with defining evolution so
broadly as to make it impossible, he then demands that we
show that evolution is "the only possible way the observed
phenomena could have come into existence". Now I ask you,
is it possible to prove ANYTHING if one must prove that it
is the only POSSIBLE way it could have happened? By this
reasoning, we could never convict anyone of a crime
regardless of the evidence. There are always hypothetical
alternatives. One could not prove that the planets are held
in their orbits by gravity, for example, because it's
POSSIBLE that they are instead pushed around by angels in a
manner which happens to mimic the predictions of
gravity.

3. He leaves the determination up to a handpicked
committee that he controls.

Given these restrictions, I will - once again - offer
Kent Hovind a million dollars to prove any empirical claim.
My money is quite safe. And so is his. And he knows it.

Now, if you want evidence for evolution, the archive is
full of discussions of innumerable lines of evidence that
can only be explained by evolutionary theory. There is no
explanation for the observed biostratigraphy of the fossil
record, for example, other than evolution. The only
alternative that creationists have come up with to explain
that phenomena is flood geology, which fails miserably for
about a hundred different reasons, and there are several
files in the archive which explain this in great
detail.

Strike three. You're out.

Feedback Letter

From:

John

Comment:

Do
biologists have any theories as to how woodpeckers
evolved?

Response

From:

John Wilkins

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Response:

Yes, it
evolved by adapting to a particular way of life through
natural selection.
How the Woodpecker Avoids a Headache is a description
of the adaptations that woodpeckers have to their unique
way of life. Despite literally scores of creationist claims
that woodpecker adaptations could not have evolved, the
adaptations of woodpeckers are not unusually complex.
Another bird has done something similar in Hawai'i - a honeyeater has evolved
woodpecker-like features. More information about
woodpeckers, including a reference to Sibley's and
Alquist's phylogeny of birds, is found at
Woodpeckers: Picidae.

Beware of creationist misunderstandings about what the
woodpecker's tongue actually does. It is attached to an
elongated hyoid bone, as you can see in the first
reference, and does not itself pass around the skull or
through any nostrils. In fact, according to the Chaffee
Zoological Gardens of Fresno site, it is a
cartiliginous process of the bone, not the bone itself,
that extends over the head. In John James Audubon's classic
Birds
of America he notes that the hyoid varies within
the (American) species of the order Picidae. He says:

There is a very curious gradation in the degree of
elongation of the horns of the hyoid bone in the different
American Woodpeckers, some of which consequently have the
power of thrusting out their tongue to a much greater
extent than others. Thus:

In Picus varius, the tips of the horns of the
hyoid bone reach only to the upper edge of the cerebellum,
or the middle of the occipital region.

In Picus pubescens, they do not proceed farther
forward than opposite to the centre of the eye.

In Picus principalis, they reach to a little
before the anterior edge of the orbit, or the distance of
1/2 inch from the right nostril.

In Picus pileatus, they extend to half-way
between the anterior edge of the orbit and the nostril.

In Picus erythrocephalus, they reach to 3
twelfths of an inch from the base of the bill.

In Picus tridactylus, they reach the base of the
ridge of the upper mandible.

In Picus auratus, they attain the base of the
right nasal membrane.

In Picus canadensis, they curve round the right
orbit to opposite the middle of the eye beneath.

Lastly, in Picus villosus, they receive the
maximum of their development, and, as represented in the
accompanying figures, curve round the right orbit, so as to
reach the level of the posterior angle of the eye.

Lest you think this is an evolutionist conspiracy, note
that John
James Audubon wrote in the 1830s. There is variation in
the woodpecker hyoid bone and structures, and intermediate
forms are not so impossible as creationist sites claim.

I've looked
at the creationist and evolutionist views on the origins of
life and have came to the same conclusion on both theories:
They both require faith in processes that have never been
observed. Creationists try to explain the origin things
with a god while evolutionists try to explain the origin of
things without a god. Neither group has a shred of factual,
observed evidence to explain where it all started.
Therefore, in the area of origin, neither is scientific
because science requires observation. So I guess it all
depends on where you want to put your faith. Thanks for a
very informative and usually hatred free website (neither
side of this issue does itself any good by being hateful),
Jason

Response

From:

John Wilkins

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While I must
disagree with your claim that faith is required in the
religious sense (see my FAQ linked above), I totally agree
that hateful rhetoric is unnecessary, unhelpful and usually
undirected. Whom should we hate? Honest folk trying to make
sense of their world, however, misguided? No, of course
not. We are I think justified in disliking those who
deliberately and knowingly mislead others in the name of
religion, and many creationist leaders do exactly that -
there is no other sensible conclusion - but hating them? I
reserve hate for those who deserve it; criminals who prey
on the defenseless.

Feedback Letter

From:

Robert

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Comment:

Can it be
said that "(around 1000 AD) man thought the world was
flat."

Please help me verify this, from those who are experts
out there. When did people start the thinking that the
world was no longer flat. I'm doing a college paper.

Thanks in advance for all the help I can get on this
research.

Robert.

Responses

From:

John Wilkins

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Response:

No. The
world was known to be round for about 1500 years before
that.

If you want more information on this, I recommend the
following books:

Kuhn, Thomas S. 1959. The Copernican revolution:
planetary astronomy in the development of Western
thought. New York: Vintage Books.

Dreyer, J. L. E. 1953. A history of astronomy from
Thales to Kepler formerly titled History of the planetary
systems from Thales to Kepler. New York: Dover.
Original edition, 1906 Cambridge UK: Cambridge University
Press.

In particular, this book considers popular views of the
uneducated masses as well as the intellectual elite. Flat
Earth views were not a part of the mainstream, or the
educated elite, or the peasant masses.

However, there is an implicit assumption in most
discussion of this subject that we are speaking of Europe
and specifically of regions under the influence of the
church. This is because the notion of the flat earth is so
often brought up in discussions of whether or not the
church promulgated flat earth views.

In fact, the cosmology of the medieval church was
solidly related to the philosophy of pagan Greeks, such as
Aristotle. Their religious views were expressed in relation
to the Hebrew bible, but their scientific views (in so far
as science existed) tended to be from the other sources,
just as it is today for the mainstream church. The church
was also largely resonsible for spreading the knowledge of
the ancient Greeks, and their cosmology prior to Galileo
was basically that of Ptolemy: a spherical and stationary
Earth with heavenly bodies in motion around it.

In other parts of the world flat earth views were still
around. For example, the
Edda, from Northern Scandanavia, presents a flat earth
model. But as the church gained influence in Scandanavia,
the knowledge of the Greeks came along as well and the old
models lost influence.

Feedback Letter

From:

Paul

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Comment:

I have known
of this website for a while now, but hadn't realized how
informative it was for evolutionary theory. I thank you for
making this site possible.

Peace

Feedback Letter

From:

Paul

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Comment:

I appreciate
your objectiveness in linking true origins, although they
didn't return the favor. I appreciate it not because I
think the true origins is a good site (perish the thought),
because it shows maturity and respect for the opposition--I
think.

Also, how has the site dealt with the the objections to
some of the articles that our posted on this site but our
classified as "rebutted" on true origins (e.g. 29
'evidences' for Macroevolution)?

Thanks, Paul

Response

From:

Wesley R. Elsberry

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Response:

Douglas Theobald's essay contains an "Other Links" box
that links to Ashby Camp's "rebuttal" on the "trueorigins"
site and also to Theobald's response to Camp.

Wesley

Feedback Letter

Comment:

Hello I am a
Christian. Aka a follower of Christ.Allthough I beleive in
absolute truth It is my opinion that one of the churches
greatests strengths is arguing over pointless doctrines.
What does it matter how God created the world? the real
point of the book of genesis is why good created the world
(because he loves us). Do you really think it is worth
spending time & money on whether the world is flat or
round when there is so much injustice, oppression &
toil? Wouldn't it please God more to try & Make the
world a better place before we start arguing & feuding
& causing more division over things that really don't
matter!

Response

From:

Wesley R. Elsberry

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Response:

I think that making sure that science is taught in
science classes, and that non-science is not taught in
those classes, counts as making the world a better
place.

Wesley

Feedback Letter

From:

Paul Holcombe

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Comment:

GREAT
WEBSITE! HIGHLY INFORMATIVE!

I used caps, because I felt that to be the best way to
describe my appreciation for this site.

Thanks, Paul

Feedback Letter

From:

C. F. Pittenger

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Comment:

There is
more than a bit of error in the statement that all
Creationists utilize the Bible as the source of their
wellstream. There are many of us that see science as the
basis of Creationism, for it is the vastly incomplete study
of all that IS. I find it ironic that pretty much all
scientists utilizing the Evolutionary Method, move backward
toward some predictable guesstimate of a beginning. When
you begin at the neutral place place they ascribe as teh
beginning it is virtually impossible to to objectively move
forward to where we are now. I dare you guys to start with
a few minerals and a little random luck and come up with
life and genetics.

C. F. Pittenger

Feedback Letter

From:

Optional

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Comment:

I am
browsing some web sites about dinosaurs. The confusion is
that some defined dinosaur as one of the several kinds of
reptile and some said that dinosaur was not reptile. So
what is dinosaur exactly? Does the word dinosaur represent
a class, order or family ?

Response

From:

Kenneth Fair

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Response:

Under the
older Linnean taxonomy, the order Dinosauria (dinosaurs) is
contained within the class Reptilia (reptiles), within the
phylum Vertebrata (vertebrates).

According to phylogenetic taxonomy, the
clade Reptilia contains all diapsids (animals with two
holes in the temporal region of the skull). The
diapsids are divided into
Lepidosauromorpha (lizards, Sphenodon, and their
extinct relatives) and
Archosauromorpha (crocodiles, birds, dinosaurs, and
their other extinct relatives). In fact, most
paleontologists now agree that birds are actually
classified as
theropod dinosaurs.

Feedback Letter

From:

Justin

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Comment:

Hello, my
name is Justin. I am inquiring about information I found on
this website and hope if you have a moment you can further
my understanding by answering my question. On the site Social Darwinism it
discusses how philosophy and science are basically in to
different realms when differing ones belief. I seem to
understand this though I was curious to know why science
can?t have some explanation for a ?reasonable? conclusion
on ones own personal philosophy or argument. For example, I
have found that homo-sapiens were not the first to have
religion and it was actually the Neanderthals. Also, with
evolution and anthropology can someone not conclude on the
basis that since man has been around so long without
sufficient or any religious beliefs that it was created in
the later years of human evolution?

Thank you for your time, Justin

Response

From:

John Wilkins

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There is a
standard error of argument in philosophy known as the
"genetic fallacy". Briefly, it runs like this: the origins
of something tell you nothing about it being good or bad.
For example, if a mushroom is grown in manure, it does not
make the mushroom bad to eat or less tasty. It may be in
the law that there is a "fruit of the poison tree"
argument, but it doesn't follow in philosophical argument.

Suppose religion did evolve say around 10,000 years ago,
and that before that we had no religion (although the
Neandertals conceivably might have - the evidence is
sparse). So what. If God was not apparent to humans until
five minutes ago, and only then in a case of drug-induced
hallucination, that does not make the revelation more or
less meaningful (although one might think that it is likely
not to be revelation).

Each religion has a "back story", as the scriptwriters
say, to explain why their religion was unknown until a
certain date (although some do this by denying there was
ever a period that it was not known). As to the truth,
credibility or plausibility of that, science cannot tell,
and philosophy can only ask to be self-consistent.

Feedback Letter

From:

W. Sumner Davis

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Comment:

I have a
very similar background, at least educationally to that of
Dr. Johnathan Wells. I had read his book "Icons of
Evolution: Science or Myth?" prior to reading the other
commentaries. I am forced to agree: I found this book an
absolute mytho-philosophical joke. His facts are open ended
and badly sckewed, his basis is no scientific, and flies in
the face of nearly every reasonable scientific fact. facts
hard won in the oppresive shadow of religious dogma. What
Wells seems to want, is to drag science and enlightement
backward 600 years. Our children have enough to contend
with in school without this confusing mumbo-jumbo from a
purported expert. With the onslaught of creationism,
Intellegent design, etc. the intellectual life of the youth
of today do not need this. We try to teach our youth that
science starts with a question and works toward an
answer--ever correcting itself. Wells has begun with an
answer--a dubious one at best, and works backward seeking
proofs. There are none in my opinion.

Dr. W. Sumner Davis Geophysisist

Feedback Letter

From:

Catherine Belk

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Comment:

I am working
on an assignment for a science class. The professor has
asked what organization maintains your site. I am not sure
that I see that. Can you answer for me?

Response

From:

Mark Isaak

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None. We are
volunteers from a variety of backgrounds and geographical
areas. We are quite disorganized.

Feedback Letter

Comment:

If you're
are so sure of yourself about evolution, than why don't you
take up a debate with Kent Hovind? He's been trying for
years to have a debate with some so-called scientists to
prove their theory, but you evolutionist are too afraid to
have a live debate with him. Are you afraid that you're
gonna be proven wrong?

Response

From:

Ed Brayton

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Response:

It's
astonishing how many questions we get like this every
month. Does no one bother to actually READ the archive
before asking a question about it? Hovind's arguments, his
credentials and his fraudulent "challenge" have all been
addressed many times over on this site. I myself was
challenged to a debate by Hovind several years ago. We
agreed on a date, a place and a format, then he changed his
mind. I'll ask you this question: Why won't Hovind agree to
a written debate to be posted on the web where the whole
world can see it? The answer, of course, is that a written
debate requires references and citations that can be
checked. And that means he'll be caught distorting the
evidence as he does time and time again in his seminars. In
a live debate, the audience doesn't have access to any of
the material he cites. In a written debate, they would. And
that's why he refuses to do them.

Feedback Letter

From:

Billy Jo

Comment:

When I first
stumbled on this site I thought it was a joke. After
browsing a while though I realized that you seriously
believe the garbage displayed here. Don't you realize that
the entire scientific community is laughing at you. Stop
spreading your psuedoscience. Read, study, and make another
page when you know something about creation.

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Response:

The sheer
irony of being accused of "pseudoscience" by someone
referring us to Kent Hovind's page is almost overwhelming.
If the entire scientific community is laughing at us, then
why is evolution accepted by virtually every scientist in
every relevant field of science? You could name every
single geologist, biologist, anthropologist, paleontologist
and geneticist in the entire world who rejects evolution
and be done in less than a minute. Feel free to write back
if you have a specific criticism to offer.

Feedback Letter

From:

Russell Ryan

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Comment:

This is a
wonderful and informative website! Keep up the good work!
If you are looking for more article ideas, I think you
might want to write an article refuting the oft-repeated
creationist claim that the woodpecker's tongue could not
have evolved. I had a hard time finding factual anatomical
information on the web to rebut those claims.

Response

From:

John Wilkins

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Comment:

Interesting
articles, but as a creationist, I still have a problem with
many of the methods used. Firstly, radio-active dating
assumes an age for a certain rate of decay. Until a
specimen has been examined in a lab for a billion years, we
don't truly know its rate of decay. We can assume a
half-life of a billion years, but why not a half-life of a
thousand years? Where did the bench marks come from? Don't
say it is the fossil found in the rock because that is like
dating a king by dating the age of the rock that he used to
build his castle. The sand on a beach may be old, but not
the shell found on it. Assumptions of age can only be made
on something of a known age, where recorded history can
closely date them. Without this process of using recorded
history, would evolutionsts date the pyramids of Egypt at 3
billion years? There rock is that old you would say! So
show me how you can know what happens to a chemical or
mineral in a million years and then I can see where your
assumptions come from. Secondly, since matter on earth is
never destroyed or created, then all atoms should be a
similar age. The volcanic dust that you date was dust or
other minerals before the volcano happened, so why would
its age change? Life grows and dies and decays but minerals
don't. They may change or combine with others but they are
still there and were before. Where did this "young rock"
come from, and where did the old rock come from? Did
meteors deposit enough new rock to form a crust over the
entire earth? I haven't found these answers on your sight,
so if you could try and direct me to where to find them,
I'd appreciate it.

Decay rates
are measured in the lab, not merely "assumed." For example,
in 1955, Kovarik and Adams reported an experimental
determination of the U238
half-life, of 4.507 billion years. Their paper describes
one experimental setup:

Alpha particles from a thin layer of natural uranium
in the form of oxide U3O8
were allowed to pass through
a grid of known geometry into an ionization chamber. The
electrical impulses there produced were amplified and
applied to an electromechanical recording system. By this
means the specific alpha activity of natural uranium was
observed to be 1486 disintegrations per minute per
milligram.
[Kovarik, A.F., and N.I. Adams, Jr., 1955.
"Redetermination of the Disintegration Constant of
U238" in Physical
Review98, No. 1, p. 46]

The half-life can be computed directly from the measured
rate of disintegration. It doesn't actually require waiting
around for half of the atoms to decay, as some might think.
The uncertainty in the measurement is related to the number
of decays counted, so scientists compensate for
slow-decaying isotopes by measuring the decays among a
large number of atoms. (Even one milligram of U238 contains over
2,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms.)

The modern value used by geologists for the U238
half-life, based on more
recent and more accurate experiments, is 4.47 billion
years. That's less than 1% different from the value
reported in 1955. If you wish to argue for a U238
half-life in the
thousand-year range, you'd have to explain why measurements
of that half-life by many different researchers were all in
agreement on a value that's off by a factor of a
million.

Isotopic dating methods don't tell us the age of atoms
themselves. Rather, the methods depend on predictable
chemical behavior of radioactive atoms, in order to compute
the elapsed time since certain significant events in the
history of things that are made of such atoms. For example,
an isotopic dating method might be used to compute the time
since a given mineral cooled enough that a certain
radioactive isotope's atoms could no longer move into it or
out of it easily.

Since cutting a stone doesn't reset the isotopic clock,
no geologist would expect to obtain the age of the pyramids
from dating the stone blocks. Creationists often use this
analogy ("an isotopic age of a tombstone won't tell you the
year of burial"), but geologists are aware of the sorts of
events that reset isotopic clocks, and the sorts of events
that do not. There is little room to suggest (as that line
of argumentation does) that there is universal confusion
among geologists on the interpretation of isotopic
data.

Feedback Letter

From:

Rick Frazier

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Comment:

The
previously known Archaeopteryx is no stranger to humans,
and in fact was spoken of by biblical writers and known as
the Cockatrice. It was, of course, exaggerated about by the
unknowledgeable ancient writers, and given a
larger-than-life reputation like leviathans and other
creatures, having at least part of their history based on
true encounters. Remember, when ancient people meet a giant
squid out at sea, when they make it to shore safely, they
exaggerate their stories to emphasize their fear and
amazement. Also there were no cameras or scientific
equipment to keep things real, measured, or permanent.
Therefore every time a story is repeated, it loses some of
the original detail. When something is described to someone
else, especially in the absence of a photo, the reciever of
the story builds a picture in his mind based on his
experiences, then relays that story later based on the
picture in his mind and not on the story he heard.
_____

The
cockatrice is a creature from medieval mythology, not from
the Bible itself. The writers of the King James Version
chose "cockatrice" as a translation of a Hebrew word that
refers to a type of poisonous snake, though there is still
some debate over exactly which type of snake is meant. The Bible
Dictionary : Cockatrice says:

It is generally supposed to denote the cerastes, or
"horned viper," a very poisonous serpent about a foot long.
Others think it to be the yellow viper (Daboia xanthina),
one of the most dangerous vipers, from its size and its
nocturnal habits

The same word is translated "cobra," "asp," "adder," or
"viper," in more modern Bible translations. Since none of
the verses describes the creature's appearance, an
identification as Archaeopteryx seems
unjustified.

Feedback Letter

Comment:

Don't you
get it at all??? How on earth could ANYTHING have come by
chance? Think about this: If the sun was even one inch
closer to the earth we would all fry. If it was even one
inch farther away from the earth we would all freeze to
death. This is only one example if I told you more I'd be
writing a book. Everything is so perfectly DESIGNED that
there has to be a Creater for it all. Open your eyes look
around. If you REALLY LOOK you will see that GOD CREATED
EVERYTHING! IN HIS IMAGE! Go read a Bible. I will pray for
all of you. May God open your hearts and minds.

Response

From:

Ed Brayton

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Response:

Your
assertion that if the earth were one inch closer to the sun
we would fry and one inch closer we would freeze, is simply
nonsense. The earth in fact has an elliptical orbit around
the sun, so the distance to the sun changes
constantly.

Feedback Letter

From:

Mark Elia

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Comment:

I've
searched in vain for a place to donate some money to help
your site stay online. While I realize this is a labor of
love and deemed something that needs to be done to combat
close-mindedness, surely the cost can be a burden to those
intimately involved.

Has it been discussed whether contributions would be
accepted for I'd certainly like to donate to help (I'm
already a member of the NCSE and the Westar Institute)?